Sarah Palin's most consequential choice since leaving the White House may be her co-author - a staunch conservative, devoted evangelical Christian, and intensely partisan Republican from far, far outside the Beltway.

Palin co-author: Evangelical, partisan

Sarah Palin's most consequential choice since leaving the Alaska governor's mansion may be her co-author - a staunch conservative, devoted evangelical Christian, and intensely partisan Republican from far, far outside the Beltway.

Lynn Vincent spent the summer working with Palin on a closely-guarded 400 page memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life." The book is due out from HarperCollins Nov. 17 - but it shot to the top of the Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists Wednesday as word of its publication spread.

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Vincent's past projects include co-writing the memoir of General William Boykin, who blasted the media and President George W. Bush alike for ending his career over his casting the war on terror in overtly religious terms. Her most political book, "Donkey Cons," describes the Democratic Party since its inception as "pro-gangster" and the "party of treason and subversion." Her work for World Magazine, where she was an editor, includes a description of President Barack Obama as the "minority survivor" of the "black genocide" - that is, abortion.

There are at least three types of politicians' books. One is the overtly autobiographical, in which an aspiring candidate casts his or her life in heroic terms. Another is the careful, policy-heavy memoir. Some of those, like Obama's "The Audacity of Hope," feed public curiosity, but more often disappear without a ripple. (Remember John Kerry's "A Call to Service"? Didn't think so.) The more commercially promising sort is the third kind, the fire-breathing partisan tract.

Palin's choice of Vincent suggests that hers will be, emphatically, a partisan tract. And it is of a piece with a post-election posture in which the nation's most intensely popular, and most intensely unpopular, Republican has chosen to deepen her bond with her base at the cost of antipathy from the independent voters who decide presidential elections.

"Sarah Palin is not a Washington person - that's her whole schtick - so she's not going to get some inside the Beltway writer," said Sara Nelson, a longtime publishing industry watcher who is books editor of Oprah Winfrey's Magazine, "O."

"The success of this book will rise and fall on how much it appeals to the Christian right," Nelson said. She called Vincent "a smart choice," if a surprising one, given that Palin was represented in her dealings with publisher HarperCollins by the ultimate Beltway insider, lawyer Robert Barnett, who also handles Obama's book projects and those of dozens of other Washington eminences.

A HarperCollins spokeswoman, Tina Andreadis, said the book will be "a memoir of Governor Palin's life," but would not respond to questions about Vincent. "We do not participate in stories regarding collaborators," she said.

Vincent and a spokeswoman for Palin did not respond to inquiries about the project.

Some Palin backers cautioned against associating the politician with the views of her hired co-author. One Palin ally said she and Vincent had bonded over what they had in common as women of similar political backgrounds.

"She’s very conservative, so politically she’s a good fit. And she has demonstrated her ability to tell somebody else’s story," said Vincent's former literary agent, Chip MacGregor.

Vincent, 47, has lived in San Diego since moving there with the Navy, according to San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Diane Bell, who described her as "uncomfortable with political pigeonholing." And her best-known book is largely apolitical: the bestselling "Same Kind of Different as Me" is an inspirational tale of the unlikely friendship between a homeless ex-con and an art dealer.

What can be gathered of Vincent's politics from her books and articles, however, suggests that her heart lies very much with the party's socially-conservative base.

The 2006 "Donkey Cons", published by the Christian house Thomas Nelson, is the only book on which she's listed as the first author, with conservative blogger Robert Stacy McCain. It's a romp through the history of the Democratic Party, beginning with Aaron Burr ("federal fugitive" and "ruthless killer") and aimed at proving that "the true history of the Democratic party is a tale of dishonesty, crime and corruption."